Engagement and Retention Strategy

Hennepin Technical College has the challenge of dropping retention and enrollment rate with enrollment dropping 5.7% in the last year and only 50% of students graduating.

Task

Identify the current challenges that students face in their academic journey that result in only 50% of students graduating. Identify the challenges in the enrollment process and marketing strategies.

Research

Immersive onsite research at HTC to understand the space and people and campus flows. We met with the counselors, the dean of students, advisors, students, and instructors to gain a well-rounded understanding of pitfalls and challenges.

Many of the findings related to communication and student engagement. The main source of communication streamed through emails that were discovered were left unopened.

The most successful students are full-time and are highly engaged in campus activities, and the students that tended to drop out of school were students that weren’t highly involved and full-time on campus.

Through our synthesis, we concluded that for all students to be better engaged, HTC would need to implement communication tools and strategies.

Deliverables

1) 5-step Engagement and Communication Strategy involving community and network development. Including check-ins and touchpoints along the academic journey.

2) Prototypes for a mobile application that would equip, inform, and connect students.

LONG-TERM ACTION:

For further documentation, prototypes and thorough implementation plan please reach out via email:

sybernstein@gmail.com